Perks and perils of living The Good Life
Tim Kasher and Stefanie Drootin sit down with Speakeasy
By Anna Williams, Staff Writer
October 3, 2007 | 8:54 p.m.
With Athens as one of their first stops, indie rockers The Good Life set out on an international tour last week in support of their latest album “Help Wanted Nights.” The All Campus Radio Network brought the band to The Union on Sunday, Sept. 30, along with fellow Omaha-based band Capgun Coup and Kansas' Fourth of July.
Known for heart-wrenching lyrics and raw sound, The Good Life has lived up to its reputation with “Help Wanted Nights,” its fourth album. Between touring and recording for all of the members’ other bands, the band has managed to compile a beautiful, 10-track album that boasts the same acoustic style as its third LP “Album of the Year.” “Help Wanted Nights” is meant to sound like it was written in a small-town bar over a period of time, documenting the locals’ heartbreaks and scandalous affairs.
Playing to an eager crowd in cramped quarters, The Good Life sounded just as electric as they do on CD. Tim Kasher (vocals, guitar; also lead singer and guitarist of Cursive) buttered up the audience throughout the show with small talk on the topics of college life (“It’s all about sex,” Kasher said) to how he plans to spread the good word about Athens, a town that none of the members has ever visited.
Speakeasy sat down to speak with Kasher and Stefanie Drootin (bass) about the new album and accompanying tour before the show.
Speakeasy: The Good Life’s back on tour for the new album “Help Wanted Nights,” your first time touring since 2004. How is it?
Tim: It’s been good so far, but it feels like every other tour because I’ve been doing this so much. Last year I toured for Cursive, and I’m already back on the road doing it again, but I do like seeing the band.
Stephanie: Yeah, it’s been good. The best part of all of it is getting to spend time together again. It’s been nice to see people coming out to the shows. We’ve done it for so many years now that it’s so comfortable. We really are a family. We know each other unlike anybody else. I moved to Omaha from Los Angeles 10 years ago to start playing with them, and ever since, we’ve been really close.
SE: Did the band choose small towns like Athens because the new album is meant to be the soundtrack to nights at a small-town bar?
S: It’s actually our agent who chooses where we play, so we didn’t choose it, but we’re really excited. I don’t think any of us have ever played in Athens. It’s a total coincidence, actually, that this is a small town and we’re playing in a bar, but it worked out well.
T: We’ve always played smaller rooms and smaller shows. We never really graduated to the 1,000 plus seat rooms. So no, it wasn’t intentional.
SE: Tim, you also wrote a screenplay for “Help Wanted Nights.” Do you plan on doing anything with that in the future?
T: Yeah, I hope to make it into a movie soon. I plan to start filming in spring. It’s still in the very beginning stages, but it’s my first movie, so I’m really excited. The album was supposed to be the soundtrack to the movie, but the album came out first. I wrote both the script and the lyrics to coincide with each other, so it should be interesting.
SE: Have you been busy with your other bands?
T: We’ve all been touring with other bands, so for me, it feels like I’ve been constantly touring. I’m so busy now between the two bands [Cursive and The Good Life] that I don’t have as much time to spend on the details of records as I’d like. I used to be able to do the album artwork, but now I’ve got to pass it off to someone else because I’m busy either recording or touring. This is why the records for each band come out every three years, which I get criticized for. It’s not that it takes me three years -- there’s really only one and a half years between records -- but once I release an album, I’ve got to go on tour for it, so I don’t have time to release and tour for the other band’s album at the same time.
S: It hasn’t been too bad for me, though. I’ve had a nice break. I’ve only gone on two other tours this year: one with McCarthy Trenching on the Bright Eyes tour and the other with Maria Taylor’s band.
SE: A lot of articles refer to The Good Life as a “side-band.” What do you think about that label?
T: Actually, I have a few problems with the music industry’s standards, and that is one of them. They criticize artists that have two bands, saying that only one band can take precedence. I want myself as a songwriter to take precedence. I think we are bitter about the "side-band" title because I have two bands that I give equally as much time to.
S: To me, it doesn’t affect me because it’s what we do. In this industry you really have to accept that people are going to say stuff like that, but we’re a band also. I think that we’re all pretty confident about the band, so I don’t think that it really affects us to a great degree.
Despite criticisms of the music industry and the physical and emotional toll of constant touring, The Good Life is a band that is truly in it for the music. To prove that money is not its goal, there are free downloads of “Heartbroke” and “You Don’t Feel Like Home to Me” (as well as a number of other songs) on The Good Life section of Saddle Creek Records’ Web site.
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